MottZilla

Pretty much improved possibilities through hardware upgrades of more memory, fast cpu and gpu. Which is pretty much all that seems worth while in the 3DS to me. They added 3D which I saw for myself, and while I see the effect and all, I can't understand why you'd want that. It didn't blow my mind or anything. It just seemed like what I thought it would be, a gimmick. The analog control, higher screen resolution, more memory, faster cpu and gpu are all nice. Though the cameras I can't really say I care about, or the gyroscopes that are supposed to be in it. When I heard that NGP would have a touch screen I was pretty disappointed. I don't like them and they end up looking crappy cause of finger prints or other smudges.

Might have something to do with CA having no money and a population overworking the roads. But lots of places in the US are suffering due to funding being cut to maintaining infrastructure. I really hope they manage to get a handle on their nuclear plant. If they suffer a meltdown or an actual fission reaction resulting in an explosion that would be terrible for everyone. Even this is terrible for everyone but it could still get worse.

You say that like it's a bad thing. The RAM Cart for the Saturn was absolutely awesome. I still think Sony fucked up big time by never providing developers and gamers with a memory expansion for PS1. But then again Sony was pretty shitty on 2D games in the North American region.

Not really. People download PS3 games all the time. These people have plenty of time. It beats spending money to them. They are certainly willing to wait, willing to tinker, etc to get free games. People may assume oh PS3 games are too big to pirate, but that just isn't the case at all. Infact some are quite small, smaller than some PS2 games.

I haven't really played too many Saturn exclusive games. A lot of what I've played are top notch arcade ports like Marvel Super Heroes Vs Street Fighter and Street Fighter Zero 3. I do want to give Panzer Dragoon a try as well as other titles. Sometime I'd like to actually play through Nights, I've only played the first few levels. It's a real shame the Sega Saturn was abandon everywhere but Japan. There were some great titles released in Japan after NA and Europe gave it the axe.

That was something else I found particularly with friends I knew that pirated 360 games. They would pirate everything. Didn't matter if the game wasn't a AAA title. They'd pirate it and play it. So yes they would pirate games they wouldn't buy, honestly. Which in my opinion, is a waste of time. People that pirate games like crazy can ruin gaming for themselves as they basically throw their standards out the window and become a gaming whore. Generally I usually only play a few new games over a year. I skip most stuff that comes out, including multiplayer games that I feel are just a passing fad and not worth 60$. Pretty much there aren't enough awesome games I'm interested in that I would need to jump through hoops to pirate them to play them all. I will point out that piracy is probably very appealing to kids with no income. When I was a kid I couldn't buy many games myself but I got to go to the video store and rent them alot. So pirating games through the internet just seems to be kids modern way of playing alot of games despite having no money. Not that it makes it ok or anything. I guess you could say I blame them for being the device that enables people and encourages people to do this. Also I blame them for making money while not creating anything of value. They are just an asshole middleman. Used game stores never were exactly wonderful but they generally had a nice selection of titles including older titles. I don't ever recall it being like it is today which you mentioned. With a game like Fallout New Vegas which I bought (and unfortunately lost interest in) I should have gone to sell it as soon as I was done with it to recoup the maximum amount of money possible. This is because of a trend that only Nintendo doesn't follow, of reducing game prices not long after the game comes out. Maybe it's a long time in video game land, but in real time it can be as soon as a few months a game will go down in price by 1/3rd its original cost. This may seem good but I find it bad for me actually giving a shit about playing any new non-multiplayer games. It's been this way for awhile. On my Xbox 360, nearly every single game I bought is multiplayer. Assassin's Creed, Fallout 3, Fallout NV, and Dead Rising are the only ones that are not. And I probably got burned on all of them. I paid full price for all but AC which was $40 for one week when I bought it. Now other than FO NV which is still new, all these games can be bought for far less. I'm not sure there is anything to be done about this, but I just wanted to complain that this is bullshit and makes me uninterested in buying games. I'm most interested in buying games that are retro perhaps in part because of the throw-away nature of modern games.

I find piracy kind of disturbing these days. At first it was just kind of funny. Then it just grows and grows. There are tons of people out there with modded Xbox 360s (and now PS3s) who just pirate the shit out of all the games. This certainly hurts the industry. The best defense so far seems to be to make it annoying or otherwise a pain in the ass to keep up. I modded my Xbox 360 but never played enough games for it to be worth it. After getting the console banned I got another for free from a friend that I modded and then it now would be banned if I logged online with it. And it's all very silly since I barely played any games I hadn't purchased retail copies of. Same thing happened with my PS3. I modded it and yet only seem to play the games I bought. Really the only piracy that I think is ok is after the game is out of the market. And I mean the retail market. Ebay and other 2nd hand outlets don't count. No need to pay some inflated collector's price for some old game when you could just pirate it and either way have zero impact on the industry. On a similar note, GameStop is evil. Their massive reselling of games for huge profit hurts the industry too. I certainly agree with consumers having the right to sell their games when they are finished with them or decide they don't like them. But GameStop reaps huge benefits from this. That and just in general I hate GameStop.

The Sega CD and Sega 32X didn't directly have any such effect on the Genesis. The reason also that the SNES kept going so late was because of the delay of the N64. If the N64 had been ready sooner, SNES would have died out sooner. The Saturn was out and Sega shifted their focus to it and let the Genesis rot. You have to understand that in Japan the MegaDrive wasn't the success that the Genesis was and in the end the Sega Saturn did well in Japan even though they like the Genesis, like the Saturn die in the US. SNES wasn't "technically superior" in some general way. Both systems had strengths and weaknesses compared to each other.

The Genesis/Megadrive actually was more "mainstream" than the SNES in North America for a time. Somewhere between 89 and 92. But then Sega pulled its infamous dumb ass moves and managed to even leave the 16bit market almost solely to Nintendo's SNES.

I liked Fire Emblem on the Famicom, FE and FE Gaiden. I also liked one of the ones on Super Famicom. Never played any of the ones actually released outside Japan though.

The 3DS sounded much better when less was known about it. The DS really needed an upgrade as it was pathetically mismatched against the PSP. But so far the big things that stand out are: poor battery life, dismal launch line-up, expensive console, expensive games. I think PSP2 has a good opening. Contrary to some people's perception the PSP actually was a fairly successful product. While I doubt they will steal the casual idiot consumer from Nintendo, the real gamers they could get more of.

Castlevania Megaman Ninja Gaiden Super Mario Bros TMNT Metroid Kid Icarus Top Gun Batman Zelda Contra Kid Dracula Gradius Guerilla War Snake Rattle 'n' Roll Battletoads Tetris Duck Tales Star Wars Punch-Out Tiger Heli Fire Emblem To name a few.

Retro games to me would be anything from the 16bit generation and back. Though I think PS1, Saturn, and N64 could be considered retro too. Pretty much the cut off though.

SNES for sure. Though PS1 might not be a bad choice due to the huge library. For a portable, Gameboy Advance SP is obviously the best choice. Too bad Game Gear didn't survive.

The first game I played was likely something on the Atari 400/800 home computer like Pac-Man, Joust, Missile Command, or something else. We had that before we got a NES with SMB/Duck Hunt. I have no clue when I started playing games, and have no real memory of it. So I can only assume I started very early.